


The History of You

by TheDarkivist



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Death, Drowning, Gen, Guilt, Martin Blackwood in the archives what statements will he read, Martin Blackwood-centric, No canon characters were harmed in the making of this fic, S1, Self-Esteem Issues, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27957365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkivist/pseuds/TheDarkivist
Summary: Martin Blackwood, Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute, recording statement of Audrey Edwards regarding a written exam. Original statement given September 1st, 2010.
Kudos: 10





	The History of You

**Author's Note:**

> Please, PLEASE, do read the tags. This story gets a little heavy in all sorts of ways, so proceed with caution. I hope you enjoy ♥

Martin woke up alone. That is to say, he woke up without being immediately sharply reminded of a mass of squirming, silver bodies pressed against his front door. An improvement, for sure. The room in the archives wasn’t built for comfort, but he managed to make himself at home. He woke up when the darkness around him still had the strange, unearthly quality of certain hours just before dawn. Adrift, disconnected from himself, reduced only to feeling like he forgot something crucial the second he opened his eyes.

The floor was chilly against his bare feet when he got up. Martin walked around the room, picking up and setting down items, no purpose behind the movement. It was as though movement – any movement – could distance him from whatever it was he left behind.

To put on warm socks and a jumper felt like too much effort, but the cold forced him to, eventually. Even the chill felt distinctly wrong – like it didn’t come from the outside, like it was trying to force its way through muscle and fat and skin from where it was buried, deep inside Martin’s bones.

Some people are born with an ice shard inside.

Sitting in Jon’s chair felt weird, like he was encroaching on their space in their absence. He sat on the opposite side of the desk, and placed the tape recorder where Jon’s elbows would be resting in a few hours. He knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again, so he decided to record one or two statements, to make himself useful. As long as he was useful, it made up a little for the fact that he was… himself.

Sometimes he doubted anyone noticed the things he did. It was Martin who discreetly replaced the storage boxes with acid-free ones, the one who made all the metal staplers (that never should’ve been used on archived documents in the first place) vanish, and he tried his hardest to use his library experience to make the archive run more smoothly. But he couldn’t _want_ recognition. That’d mean he was doing it for attention, and did he deserve it? Just for doing his goddamn job? Was that what he wanted? And would he, perhaps, like a medal, too? A pat on the head?

“Statement of...”

_Martin Blackwood, Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute, recording statement of Audrey Edwards regarding a written exam. Original statement given September 1 st, 2010._

_My name is Audrey. I have two younger siblings, Cecily and Dahlia. Our parents used to joke that they chose names in advance, so their children would be all in alphabetical order. There’s a gap though, and the joke isn’t funny any longer. It’s fine. We read the leaflets, we did the therapy, we moved on in an orderly fashion. That’s one remarkable thing about my childhood._

_One unremarkable thing about my childhood is that I suffered from recurring nightmares. That was even before I had to learn how to be quiet about people in the past tense. I hesitate to call them nightmares, to be honest, because nothing ever happens in them. I sit in a room. It’s always the same room, with many desks and uncomfortable chairs. There’s a smell of chlorine. I wait. I grow restless, but I don’t dare to leave._

_The door handle moves, and I wake up drenched in cold sweat._

_Rather underwhelming, isn’t it? I know you asked me to state the plain facts of my experience, but I can’t. There’s a difference between what’s real and what’s true. I’m fine now. I’ve taken the steps, I’ve done my homework, I’ve cried on the red sofa while a professional took notes. That means I must be fine._

_The exam was almost cancelled, because the lecturer was ill or hungover or who knows what. University in a nutshell. In the end, he sent one of the interchangeable postgrads to hand out the papers and make sure nobody cheats in an embarrassingly obvious way. Now I can’t even remember what their face looked like, except that their appearance struck me as familiar, though I had no idea why. Well, you were in the same department of the same university, you must’ve seen them before, I reasoned with myself._

_But even then I doubted that explanation, because I was sure I would’ve noticed them before. It was the hair, you know? Natural copper red, the same as mine. Theirs was shorter, pin straight, and weirdly greasy, as if wet. It hung around their perfectly ordinary face in heavy curtains, barely moving while they distributed the papers in silence._

_I was ready for the exam, because being a chronically overcaffeinted overachiever will do that to you. Unless the fear of failure stops you from even beginning to study. It’s not a great personality trait, to be honest._

_Then I sensed it. The smell of chlorine. I raised my head, suddenly feeling a chill. In that moment, I would swear I was sitting in the room of my nightmares – but how didn’t I realise it earlier? My chest felt tight, and my hands turned cold and clammy. It’s fine, I’m fine, I’m just nervous because of the exam, I repeated to myself as the person went over the instructions for the test._

_I can pass a stupid test, I kept telling myself until I calmed down enough to read the questions._

Martin paused the tape recorder and just sat there for several minutes, trying to warm his hands on the mug of tea he’d prepared earlier. Being the only person in the archives felt wrong. The archives without Tim and Sasha and Jon (and Martin, maybe? Was he allowed to count himself in?) seemed too empty. Haunted. And though he knew he was alone in there, he couldn’t shake off the feeling of being watched.

“If you want a cuppa too, you can just say so,” he said into the empty room. No response. Thank goodness. He resumed recording.

_Question 1:_

_Think about a personal failure._

_That struck me as odd, but nobody else seemed confused, so I assumed it was a lead-in into the actual test. I gave it a moment, until I could think of something serious enough to be plausible, but not so personal that I couldn’t share it._

_Question 2:_

_Liar._

_It may have been a figment of my imagination, but the smell of chlorine grew stronger. My pen fell out of my hand, and I hit my head on the desk trying to retrieve it. I felt the substitute’s eyes on me the entire time, even though I couldn’t catch them actually looking at me._

_Question 3:_

_Are you afraid your friends would judge you if they knew?_

_Question 4:_

_You’re right. They would._

_Question 5:_

_You knew Ben wasn’t a good swimmer._

_I thought I’d cried out, but nobody even glanced in my direction. Was that some kind of joke? I should’ve walked away. It was a cruel, sick joke. It wasn’t my fault. The whole family was there and nobody noticed until someone – Cecily or Dahlia? - realised Ben was missing. Either nobody was responsible, or everyone was._

_It is remarkably easy to drown unseen, apparently._

_I couldn’t stop reading the questions. I knew – I_ knew _none of what had happened was my fault, but I had to continue. It felt… satisfying. Like running your tongue over an aching tooth. Every jab only confirmed what I’d known all along. A terrible kind of relief._

_Question 6:_

_You’re the eldest. You were supposed to keep an eye on them._

_Question 7:_

_Do you realise the therapist was paid to tell you it wasn’t your fault?_

_A shadow fell across my desk. I kept my eyes down. The shadow didn’t move. A drop fell on the test. I touched my face. No, I wasn’t crying._

_Another drop._

_The drops_

_dripped on the test_

_and they_

_dripped on the desk_

_and_

_the dripping_

_never_

_stopped._

_The stench of chlorine grew unbearable. I finally raised my head, but all I saw was the wet red hair. I couldn’t describe his face if I tried. He tap tap tapped the piece of paper before me. I bent my head, obedient. I owed him that much._

_Question 8:_

_Do you really believe you’ll get it right this time?_

_Question 9:_

_Do you know where Cecily and Dahlia are right now?_

_The shadow had disappeared, but droplets were still splattering on the test, blurring the writing past the point of legibility. He wasn’t standing above me any more. He wasn’t in the classroom._

_I was weeping. I looked around, certain that I disturbed my classmates.. Everyone was focused on the exam._

_Nobody noticed._

_Statement ends._

Martin exhaled slowly, staring bleakly at the tape recorder for a long moment before he realised he had to turn it off again. He meant to do at least two or three statements to really help out, but the reading left him drained. Like performing for very discerning audience.

He stretched, trying to shake off the same persistent feeling of being observed.

“Satisfied now?” Martin asked the tape recorder. He often talked to inanimate objects out of habit, but concluded it was fine, as long as they didn’t answer.

“You’re up early.”

The voice made him start. “Christ. Jon! How… how long have you been standing there?” Martin cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry. You startled me.”

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to. I heard sounds coming from here and I thought...” Jon trailed off, and didn’t finish the sentence.

Martin offered a weak smile. “What? That there’s a ghost in here doing some post-grad post-mortem research on the side?”

Jon didn’t respond right away, but it seemed as if he was genuinely considering it. Then he shook his head, leaning on their cane a little more heavily. “No. I don’t think a self-respecting ghost would spend precious eternity dealing with the chaos in here.” He sat down in his favourite chair, stretching out one leg. “Warding off evil powers. One advantage of Gertrude’s filing system.”

A smile flashed across the head archivist’s face. Blink – and you miss it. His eyes lingered over Martin, then he cleared his throat, and grabbed a statement from the top of the pile, his expression closed off once more.

Martin hesitated. Finally, he took his tea, already cold, and left the room. The door closed soundlessly behind him. The spell – the brief warm exchange – vanished, like Jon’s smiles.

It was time to resume his usual duties.


End file.
